1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a base material processing device and a base material processing method using the device.
2. Description of the Related Art
In processes for manufacturing liquid crystal display devices, organic EL display devices, and the like, various process lines are provided, such as a base material exposure line, an exposed base material etching line, an etched base material cleaning line, and the like.
Recently, research has been actively made for liquid crystal display devices and organic EL display devices using flexible substrates having high flexibility and high impact resistance, such as plastic substrates and metal film substrates, in place of hard substrates, such as glass substrates, silicon wafer substrates, and the like. The flexible substrates having high flexibility cannot hold their shapes by themselves. For this reason, processes for manufacturing display devices using such flexible substrates excellent in flexibility use a roll-to-roll system for conveying a band-shaped base material with tension applied thereto. In the roll-to-roll system, the base material is conveyed in a roll to roll format (for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2005-185884 or Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2002-087665).
In order to increase manufacturing efficiency, in some cases, the process lines may be operated for simultaneously conveying a flexible base material by using the roll-to-roll system.
However, in the case where a flexible base material, such as a plastic base material, or the like is conveyed in a roll-to-roll format through a single line that connects process lines, when malfunction occurs in some processing apparatus, not only the processing apparatus but also all of the other processing apparatuses must be stopped. This may decrease the manufacturing efficiency.
Further, the single route that connects the process lines cannot sufficiently address the case where a process line should be increased for urgent necessity for a production increase or the like.
Moreover, in the case where the route that connects process lines is not continued, and a continuous flexible base material must be moved to the next process line after a process in some process line is finished, the flexible base material is rolled up to a roll-shaped winder or the like every time a process is performed in each process line, and is then rolled out therefrom and conveyed to the next process line. In this processing method, the flexible base material rolled out from the roll-shaped winder or the like is subjected to the next process in such a manner that its portion on which the previous process is performed last is rolled out and processed first. For this reason, a difference in process waiting time (retention time) is generated within the continuous flexible base material. Particularly, the longer the flexible base material is, the greater this difference becomes, which serves as a factor of failure in base material processing.